


Neighborhood Watch

by counterheist



Series: Neighborhood Watch [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Kid Fic, M/M, dat ass, managing your anger is better than not managing your anger, micronations, rome gets the short and homophobic stick, tight white bootyshorts, why do i keep writing them as double stalkers what does that say about me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-16
Updated: 2010-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://hetalia-kink.livejournal.com/17337.html?thread=53006009#t53006009">From the kink meme</a>. Lovino and Antonio live in the same neighborhood. They are strangers, single and interested... in each other. If only they could just talk like normal people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Him

Lovino Vargas lived in a light blue house with a white picket fence, in a nice neighborhood with a playground down the street. He had an average job in an office only six stops away from the train station down the other road his light blue house sat on the corner of. While his neighbors had mere grass on their lawns, Lovino had an enormous garden instead. He’d filled it with vegetables and herbs and all the little grown things he could find to reduce his grocery bill ( _his brother had snuck in some flowers as well, but Feliciano was stupid like that, and stubborn, so Lovino graciously let them stay_ ).

Lovino Vargas’s life was the perfect side of average, the sort of bliss only seen in movies and comics from an earlier age: light blue paint, green garden, white picket fence, two and a half chil— “—dren. No. I mean _yes_ , I still don’t have any children, old man. Bastard, this is the _millionth_ time; which part don’t you understand? The ‘g’ the ‘a’ or the ‘y’?... No I’m not going to grow up and settle down with a nice girl, fuck … no. No no, **no**. Don’t you dare bring my mother into this. No she’s… I don’t care. Even if you are, I don’t care I don’t care you… you never even fucking listen!

“…

“…say that again. I swear to God if you fucking say that again I will drive back home and your shit-faced cock-sucking—

“…

“Yeah I don’t give a shit where you went ‘ _right_ ’ with Feliciano. Feli-this, Feli- **everything**. If you love him so much then why don’t go and call him instead of harassing me every week? Fuck off, don’t call. Ever.”

**SLAM**

Lovino Vargas’s anger management classes were only a short ten minute walk away from his light blue house, with its white picket fence and no children inside. Lovino prided himself on deliberately missing the meetings his brother ( _who lived in a yellow house, with two adorable little daughters and no fence at all_ ) had signed him up for twice every week.

In his mind, Lovino didn’t need them. And even if Feliciano thought he did, that was only because Feliciano was stupid and had a fat head and… and… Lovino slumped over to his kitchen table and set his head gently down onto the wood surface. He felt like thumping his head down, and maybe hitting his fist against the table too. He did neither of these things because he secretly knew who would lose if it came down to a fight between himself and the table. And he hated pain. And it didn’t matter anyway because he was _smarter_ than the table, and _better_ and he had opposable thumbs and it _didn’t_ and.

And he hated talking to his father. He had no idea why the stupid bastard kept calling him when their conversations were always the same. “Have kids yet?” “No, dad.” “You disappoint me.” “Die in a fire.”

Rage, rage, go to the hardware store and buy a telephone because another one had cracked itself open against the side of his bookshelf, the cheap things did it all the time. Rinse and repeat, and hang the perfect side of average out to dry.

Two things made Lovino’s life a little more bearable, even during those times when his father had the nerve to call twice in one day. The first was actually a pair, two bright-eyed sweethearts who looked up to Uncle Lovi still, who didn’t judge him or call him a faggot or tell him to stop being angry all the time, ve, Lovi please, it’s all in your head. Rosa and Laura, four and six respectively, visited their Uncle Lovi whenever their mother and father needed some time alone to ‘fix the dishwasher.’

Sometimes it took all weekend for Lovino’s brother and sister-in-law to ‘fix the dishwasher,’ and _he_ was the one left explaining to his nieces how that was supposed to make any sense at all.

Seriously.

The last time they’d asked, he’d told them that ‘Mama and Papa are both very stupid so it takes them longer than normal people to do simple tasks.’ That had worked easily, and all further questions had belonged to the dinner and bedtime story categories. But both girls were getting older and if Feliciano thought he could get away with making _Lovino_ do all the explaining-of-difficult-things in the girls’ formative years then he needed to be reminded what Rosa was like after managing to eat an entire blueberry pie by herself.

That was the wonderful thing about being an uncle, and not a father. Papa had to lay down rules and sometimes enforce bedtimes when Mama made him, even if being strict often made him cry directly afterwards. Uncles could break those rules with a smile, remain the good guy and hand off a pair of grubbysticky children disguised as sleeping angels back over to Papa once the ‘dishwasher’ was ‘better.’ And Rosa was really good at only getting sick once she’d gone to sleep and woken back up again ( _like hell was Lovino revealing that trick to Feliciano; Feli deserved it for imposing so much_ ).

Being an uncle filled a void in Lovino’s life that no one was supposed to know about, ever ( _except he was starting to suspect that magically Feliciano’s thick head had realized it_ ). Somehow, those two children had done what no one else had managed to do and even after spending most of their time in Feliciano’s company, they still thought Lovino had hung the stars in the sky. Not that Lovino kept track of that sort of thing.

He realized he’d started drooling on his tablecloth in his daze and pulled back in disgust. No, Lovino Vargas didn’t keep track of things like that.

The things he kept track of were more like the second thing that made Lovino’s life bearable, despite his father and all those times Rosa had snuck into the pantry before Lovino had learned her sleeping-before-vomiting-over-everything trick.

That thing ran past Lovino’s white picket fence every evening at half past eight. If his nieces were over, Uncle Lovi was cool enough to let them watch their favorite show ( _that lasted exactly from 8 to 9_ ) on the TV in the study facing the backyard. If Lovino was cooking… no, Lovino was smart enough not to start cooking before 8:30. Because no matter what he had been doing at 8:15, no matter who called with an emergency at 8:25, Lovino made sure to drop everything and stand behind the long curtains in his front room by 8:29.

Because at 8:30, on the dot, the thing turned the corner onto one of Lovino’s streets and made living through the day just a little bit better. That wasn’t as creepy as it sounded.

Lovino knew the thing had a name, although he wasn’t sure what that was. He didn’t really mind not knowing, because he was already half a heartbeat away from assigning the thing the honorary title of **Him** in his mind. And Lovino was not about to become the simpering thirteen-year-old girl his father automatically thought he was. Knowing… the thing…’s name would probably be worse, and lead Lovino down all sorts of pathetic paths he didn’t want to walk. Like trying to find out **H** — the _thing_ ’s phone number, or where he worked, or if he was single, or if he wanted to spend next Friday letting Lovino cook him dinner and maybe breakfast the next morning.

Obsessing over things like that was pathetic, which Lovino wasn’t at all. Lovino wasn’t a desperate catcher, he was a ( _rather desperate_ ) _catch_ , and that’s what he repeated to himself as he walked away from his damp kitchen table and took his position behind the front curtain for another evening’s… he didn’t know what to call it. For another evening.

The room was quiet, and the ticking of the hands on Lovino’s wristwatch was even louder than the thrum of passing cars. Thirty more seconds.

He didn’t know why **H** — the thing went running at such a weird time. It was deep into autumn already, which meant it was dark in the neighborhood by 8:30. Probably cold too, even though the amount of clothes th—the thing wore didn’t give that away.

Lovino’s musing cut off as the second hand on his watch ticked past the twelve and a familiar figure jogged into his line of sight. It was stupid, but sometimes it felt like **H—H—** _he_ slowed down when he went past Lovino’s house. It was probably a trick of the street lights, just like how the thing’s chest probably wasn’t that defined in daylight and **Hi** — his lick-cream-off-me-I’ve-been-working-under-the-sun-all-day-wth-my-hands tan was entirely due to shadows.

Shadows.

The best part, in Lovino’s opinion, not that he had an opinion about shamelessly leering at a neighbor from behind the safety of machine wash only off-white curtains… but if he did have an opinion it would have been that the best part was once the thing had run past Lovino’s hiding spot, all Lovino had to do was switch windows and he had an unobstructed view of **H—Him** no, **_the thing_** jogging away.

Wearing only a muddy pair of sneakers and a tight pair of white shorts that Lovino felt uncomfortable being in the same city as, the thing was probably breaking six or seven of the neighborhood’s decency codes. Lovino didn’t care. He needed to watch that ass disappear into the misleading streetlight, only to turn around at the end of the next block and become those _legs_ and _abs_ and _arms_ and the face Lovino should have been concentrating on the whole time. Needed it like other men needed a beer after work or a smoke or just one more hit.

Lovino Vargas’s pathetic side of average heart beat loud and strong as **He** ran past his house for the second and final time that night and disappeared down the street.

 **He** ( _fuck he’d stopped fighting it_ ) lived less than a block away. Just around the corner. Lovino knew exactly where because he had to drive by the house every time he had to pick up his nieces from Feliciano’s, and sometimes **He** was out front watering the lawn and Lovino had to remember that people got angry when you drove into their mailboxes accidentally. _So close_. But Lovino was not thirteen, and maybe not as great with words as he wished he was, and what was he supposed to do, walk over with a casserole and say ‘I watch you every night?’ The thought dribbled down the back of Lovino’s neck like a slow stream of ice water, and he prepared to get on with his life like he always did after **His** 8:30 jog was over.

Until another thought stuck its hand down Lovino’s pants and melted his disappointment clear away. Only an idiot would go over to **His** house and expect **Him** to welcome him with open, shirtless arms.

Only a clever, clever man would realize that gardening at 8:30 at night was silly because in the dark the hose could slip out of his hand and drench an unsuspecting jogger. Who would need to be apologized to and invited into the clever man’s house. Lovino Vargas backed away from his front window, hit his shin against the perfectly sharp side of his normal coffee table and only cursed its mother twice.

He was in a good mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's weird writing out-of-the-closet!Romano. "Together" felt that way too. 
> 
> Rosa and Laura: sound pretty similar to Republic of Rose Island and Tavolara Island, don’t they? Yes, N.Italy’s got micronations for kids ( _The sense I can make of their wikis: Rosa goes to jail for tax evasion when she grows up. Things go badly from there. Laura ends up hallucinating that she’s a princess, while in reality Feliciano takes care of her_ ). I think of them as precocious little plot devices. They will show up once more. Their mother? I have my bias, but think whoever you like, she won’t be appearing.
> 
> **Him** : It’s hard to see with this font, but every instance of this word includes a little sigh and some staring into nothingness before guiltily snapping out of it. Lovino learns Antonio’s name quickly from here because **Him** is rather annoying to type out in HTML, which is what I had to do on the kink meme. Oh and the _DATASS_ trope? I feel no shame.
> 
> _Original prompt_ : Antonio and Lovino live in the same neighbourhood but don't know each other personally. Lovino sees Antonio jogging every day and quite enjoys his tan and shirtlessness. Lovi tries to get Toni to notice him by conveniently gardening or getting the mail or w/e at the same time that the other jogs, but they end up meeting by something unplanned, awkward, and cute. 
> 
> Bonus: Antonio was actually doing things to get Lovino to notice him too.
> 
> Credit for last sentence of the summary goes to one of the anons who commented on Ch3 at the kink meme with "Oh you guys if only you could just talk like normal people." I liked it, so I yoinked it. Thank you anon!


	2. Gossip Girls

The first cloud in the sky appeared over the neighborhood around two in the afternoon. Lovino watched it grow with a critical eye. One cloud didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could just be a grey day. Grey days had lots of clouds; one cloud wasn’t something to worry about. The rest of the clouds that filled the sky by eight o’clock were angry and dark and something to worry about. So were the wind and the rain and the lightning.

Lovino had never bothered to check outside his window at 8:30 during a storm. **He** wouldn’t be stupid enough to go running in weather like that. **He** could slip, or get electrocuted, or have **His** flimsy white shorts plastered against **His** chiseled body by the wind and the rain. The rain. The wet rain. Every contour of **His** body. Which mostly consisted of **His** crotch, because those shorts were almost embarrassingly small. And white.

Very wet rain.

What time was it? Just a little past 8:30? …Lovino had time to check. Just to check, to see if **He** was stupid enough to go running in the rain. Rain so thick that Lovino almost couldn’t see the street when he peered out his window, not bothering to hide. If anyone was outside they wouldn’t be able to see him. Not that anyone would be outside in such shitty weather. Especially not the man jogging with slow, soggy footsteps up Lovino’s street.

Surprise caught Lovino’s mind in a vice grip, and for a moment he couldn’t think of anything. The moment passed, and Lovino leaned against the windowpane, muttering to himself. “Really?”

Because even though **He** was stupid enough to go running in the rain, **He** was smart enough to go running in the rain with a long-sleeved shirt and more reasonable shorts on. Which, in Lovino’s mind, ruined the point; not only were the clothes **He** had picked out _not_ waterproof, and therefore soaked, but they were baggy too. Even with all the water weighing them down, they were only skin-tight in a couple of places, and not the places Lovino had been looking forward to for half an hour.

But still. These shorts were dark red. Lovino thought **He** looked nice in red. Lovino thought he needed a sharp knock to the head because he was acting like an idiot. Again.

 **He** wasn’t moving as quickly as usual. Lovino blamed the new clothes; the wet fabric would certainly slow **Him** down. And then **He** stopped. And bent over. And Lovino realized that not getting laid in far too long was probably the root of a lot of his problems.

 **He** was just tying his shoes.

 **He** was not waving **His** ass around in the air for longer than **He** needed to to taunt Lovino.

 **He** … didn’t have any underwear lines.

 _Fuck_.

Lovino pulled himself away from the window, even though **He** hadn’t gone anywhere yet. He couldn’t keep staring like that, not with the thoughts rolling around in his head. He was beginning to feel like some juvenile peeping tom. And that was _not_ Lovino Vargas’s style. Lovino Vargas’s style was more like running to his bathroom to get a towel, running outside into the rain, and giving his stranger a helping hand. And giving Lovino a way to introduce himself. Yeah, that sounded like something he would do.

One minute later, with a speed he usually reserved for those times when he needed to get away from the prying neighborhood associations as fast as possible, Lovino dashed down his porch steps, raced down the slight hill his front walk rambled up, and vaulted over the gate of his white picket fence. If **He** had still been there, **He** probably would have been crushed, because Lovino landed exactly where **He** had previously been.

But **He** wasn’t there, and Lovino had forgotten to put on a coat, and soon both he and his towel were as wet as **He** had been. Disappointed, Lovino opened his front gate and sulked up the walk back to his house. What had he been thinking? Of course **He** wouldn’t still be there, that would require something good happening in Lovino’s life. And Lovino’s weekly allowance of good things had already been filled up by the come-from-behind win of his favorite football team on Thursday.

Lovino’s weekly allowance of bad things still had plenty of room in its quota, however. Accordingly, as soon as Lovino set foot on the wet wood of the first step of his front porch, he slipped, fell backwards, and received a sharp knock to the head. “Fuck!”

The wet concrete made him shiver and the rain falling into his eyes made him blink, but Lovino didn’t get up for a while. Face to the sky, he continued to sulk. “…I didn’t mean it literally.”

The next morning, a Sunday, Lovino woke up at dawn, a habit, and went outside to take stock of his garden, a necessity. He knew Feliciano’s flowers wouldn’t have made it through the storm, but he hoped some of his vegetables would. Donning an old shirt and jeans that made him feel muddy just by looking at them, Lovino went outside into the deceptively clear morning to survey his damp domain. Just as he thought, the flowers were ruined, almost all their petals knocked to the ground during the night.

He didn’t even want to imagine the downtrodden look Feliciano would get upon seeing the remains of the roses. And usually Lovino enjoyed it when something disappointed Feliciano; just a little.

Rolling up his shirtsleeves, Lovino got to work in the mud and mess of leaves with a dedication he never displayed in his paper pushing. Gardening wasn’t work for him, even when it involved lifting heavy bags, standing in awkward ways that hurt his back or getting fertilizer in his eyes ( _that was disgusting, but still not work_ ). Lovino had no idea how that had happened, because he hated most other physical activity and he usually lied his way out of nature trips with Feliciano’s happy little family unit. _‘I’m sorry Feli, something’s come up at work. Tell the girls I’ll see them next weekend.’_

A little after noon, Lovino took a break from his garden, to relax on his couch and not do much of anything. Except wonder how he was going to ‘accidentally’ meet **Him**. The garden hose plan was out, it reminded Lovino far too much of the rainstorm from the previous night. And as much as he enjoyed revisiting the mental picture of **Him** , dripping wet, red shorts in the air and waiting, Lovino’s head was still killing him from the fall. He needed a plan that didn’t involve water. He’d… think of something. Maybe.

A little less enthused than when he’d started to rest, Lovino went back to work with only a small huff at how life liked to screw him over ( _but not get him screwed_ ). Before he could even leave the safety of his covered porch, he heard high-pitched voices. They vaguely reminded him of his busybody aunt who had thrown holy water at him the first time he had come back for Christmas after moving out.

Lovino’s memory did not fail him. Two middle-aged women stood on the sidewalk, chatting. Lovino recognized one as his next-door neighbor, and the other as a divorcée who lived down the street and who liked to try and get all the single men in the neighborhood to have a threesome with her and her daughter. Lovino ducked behind the porch railing as quickly as he could. Before letting himself be seen he needed to know the divorcée wasn’t going to bug him about that again ( _for the third time_ ). He peeked over the edge, just the tiniest bit, to see if the two women had seen him walk out his door.

Neither was looking in his direction. Lovino’s neighbor, he couldn’t remember her name, clutched at a plate of charred lumps as though they were diamonds. “I can’t talk now Gabrielle; I’m taking these over to Antonio on the next street.”

“Antonio?”

He thought her name started with a D… or maybe it was a P… and she had a son, some creep of a kid who kept staring at Lovino whenever Lovino gardened. “Yes, Antonio Fernandez. Don’t tell me you don’t know who he is, Gabrielle? I’m sure you’ve seen him out running, half the neighborhood sets their watch by him now.”

Suddenly, the conversation Lovino was eavesdropping on became infinitely more interesting. They couldn’t be talking about… but who else…?

“In the evenings, in that pair of little white—”

“Yes! That’s him!”

 **Him**.

Gabrielle whistled. “Yes, I know who you mean now. I’d forgotten his name.” She frowned, tapping her chin with a long finger. Her nails were fake, and red, and Lovino was more than a little scared of them. “You know, Doris, I’ve heard he’s a little… _unsavory_.”

A look of realization rolled slowly across Doris’s face ( _Doris. Yes, that was it_ ) before a smoggy smugness settled in around the corners of her eyes. “Antonio is a lovely young man. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Gabrielle looked around and leaned closer, as if imparting a grand secret to her friend. Lovino sank a little lower behind the railing, until he could only just see above it. And listened. “ _I’ve_ heard he’s a… rumors are rumors, but there must be some reason a man like him hasn’t settled down. I know he’s met my daughter.”

Doris raised her nose in the air. Lovino had been around enough neighborhood parties to know that meant she knew something she thought no one else did. “It’s _not_ just a rumor.” Gabrielle gasped, delighted by the scandal.

Lovino’s spying heart beat faster.

Doris continued. “I was talking to him about my Ethan, he’s at university, remember? Well, I was telling Antonio about how my Ethan up and decided he was a homosexual last spring, and you know naturally it came as a shock but Horace and I have always been very good to Ethan and we decided that this should be no different, so we told him he could bring his new ‘friend’ home with him for his birthday if that was what he liked.” She took a deep, thundering breath.

Before Gabrielle had time to turn the monologue back into a conversation, Doris prattled on. “And he did. Rajit was his name, from India, and he was such a darling, not like you’d think, yes, very clean and polite. He wrote plays, very clever, but he was also doing a Mathematics degree too and I told my Ethan, I said, ‘dear you should take notes from this lifestyle decision of yours’, but don’t you know they broke up just last month, Ethan was so torn up about it and I thought that would be that, but I couldn’t say that to my little boy because Tim and I had decided together, we did, that we would be supportive, so… so… where was I Gabrielle?”

Long years on the garden society board had raised Gabrielle’s tolerance for mindless chatter. “You were saying that the rumors about Antonio Fernandez are true.”

Fewer years ( _that felt just as long or longer_ ) being pestered by the garden society had raised Lovino’s ability to not give a fuck about why their cucumbers weren’t doing as well as his or whose daughter was ‘really very nice. And flexible.’ But he’d also learned a thing or two about the useful tidbits that could be gleaned from a lonely housewife’s weekly report. And hidden as he was, he didn’t even have to smile and nod along.

“Exactly! I was picking up Princess from him when we got to talking, and maybe I knew even then, he was so polite just like Ethan’s Rajit was, and I got to telling him about my Ethan, and you know I knew about those rumors about poor Antonio and I thought ‘well Doris, here’s your chance, ease into it’ and I said to him ‘Now Antonio,’ because he insists that I call him by his first name, such a darling, ‘Now Antonio, you wouldn’t happen to be on the market at the moment would you? Not for myself, mind, my Horace and I have been going thirty-two years strong next Wednesday,’ and after he complimented me, such a charming boy I’ve never seen, I said ‘because my poor Ethan is a gay and Horace and I are very proud of him, but he’s recently lost his first gentleman friend if you quite understand me, and I wondered if you wouldn’t mind taking him for coffee, he used to love doing that with Rajit.’”

Lovino swore he felt a few of his brain cells shriveling away into nothing. At this rate he would turn into his brother.

Gabrielle slapped her friend’s arm playfully. “Don’t you dare stop now, Doris Bramley.”

“Well.” Lovino gulped. “You know what he said?” Getonwithitgetonwithit… “He said, in that funny way of talking he has, oh it sent a shiver right up my spine but you know I’m only for Horace, but if I was a few decades younger…”

Gabrielle, luckily, snapped before Lovino did. “Doris!”

“Yes, yes Gabrielle. Don’t rush me. Antonio said that it was very considerate of me to look out for my son like that,” Doris paused one last time, “but that he was already 33 and would feel very strange going on a coffee date with a 23 year old graduate student!”

The two women tittered between themselves about Antonio Fernandez’s looks and bearing, and how he didn’t look a day over 30 and if they were a _decade_ younger ( _“Don’t kid yourself, Gabrielle, dear”_ )… Lovino’s thoughts were more to the point. ‘…that as—that— he’s 33? How the hell does he do that?’

Gabrielle recovered from the news faster than Lovino did, and soon she had Doris spinning the rest of her tale. “And you know that didn’t confirm things, I had to ask just to make sure.”

“You _didn’t_! Doris you minx!”

‘Minx’ was not a word many would use to describe Doris Bramley. Not even Horace. “Exactly! I said, ‘Antonio, I wish I knew your secret! And it’s alright: my Ethan won’t be any more depressed than he’s already been. It’s just so _difficult_ to find him a nice homosexual man to settle down with in this area.”

“And?”

Lovino realized he’d started chewing on one of his thumbnails. It was another habit of his, something he’d done when stressed ever since he was a round little kid with no patience and a bad mouth. He took his finger out of his mouth as quickly as he could and wiped it down on his pants. If no one saw that then it didn’t happen… he continued to listen.

Doris continued to speak, pitching her voice lower, into a strange accent Lovino didn’t recognize ( _but correctly assumed was supposed to be the all-encompassing ‘Foreign’_ ). “And he said, ‘Ah ha… I’m sure there’s more than just me. If your son keeps looking no doubt he’ll find the right person.’ He said that outright, sweet as anything.”

“So it’s really true.”

“True as my prize biscuits.” Gabrielle coughed pointedly, and Doris sniffed. “True as the air and the sky you old harlot.”

Gabrielle waved her arms dramatically. “And here I was hoping to set him up on a coffee date with my Marie. You know she went and decided to become a _vegetarian_ at school…?”

Lovino, finally, blessedly, stopped listening. That was… in his hopes and, frankly, in his fantasies… he’d always just _assumed_. He didn’t know why. He couldn’t usually tell the difference when he saw people ( _he’d thought Feliciano was flaming for most of their lives, and look how that had turned out_ ), not even when he was attracted to them. How the hell was he supposed to know a guy’s sexual preferences just by watching him run? A guy was straight unless he hit on Lovino of his own volition. That was Lovino’s rule. Lovino’s rule saved him from plenty of bad guesses and awkward situations and humiliation. He liked that outcome of his rule well enough not to change it, even though it didn’t get him much action.

But with **Him** , no, with _Antonio_ , Lovino had guessed. Unquestioningly.

It was probably the shorts.

Those shorts and **Hi** — Antonio inside them and Lovino had the sudden epiphany that his rule was shit.

Half an hour later, after a shower that had started out cold and well-intentioned and that had ended steaming red burning hot, Lovino stepped out his front door again. It was kind of stupid to wash right before going out to wrestle with plants in the mud, but he had needed that. _Really_ needed that. Lovino couldn’t see or hear anyone else around by the time he got out his clippers and trowels and tools of the trade. That was something else he had sorely needed. He’d work in peace for a few more hours, shower again, and by 8:30, weather permitting, he’d. He’d. He’d something. Lovino didn’t know what yet, but he’d definitely something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had too much fun with the old ladies. If you’d like, think of them as the Republic of Saugeais and Frestonia ( _no relation to Estonia. Gabrielle and Doris exist because Francis and Arthur have their own parts to play. The micronations they can represent if you feel like it exist within France and England, respectively_ ). But meeting the neighborhood is fun? And to make up for it I gave you sopping wet Spain, backstory and Romano being grumpy?
> 
> “Very wet rain”: Lovino’s inner pervy monologue is a very eloquent thing.
> 
> “ **He** … didn’t have any underwear lines”: because his boxers were very loose. Right, Romano? Right?
> 
> “Lovino had guessed. Unquestioningly”: He honestly didn’t know about Antonio. It really **was** the shorts. They’re the ‘mincing around’ type, to reference the epic ‘N.Italy writes mystery novels fill’ on the kink meme. It will be explained, eventually, why Antonio is wearing them.


	3. What If?

By mid-afternoon Lovino sat on the grass, surrounded by leaves and vines and the single daisy that had survived the storm. He didn’t have the heart to kick it over, and might even have placed some extra soil at its base to replace the dirt that had washed away. His broken watch read two o’clock, but he knew it was later than that by the height of the sun. He looked back to the flower. If someone suggested he had painstakingly spent half an hour making sure the little plant would survive after all it had been through the night before… that someone would be stupid. Really stupid. And wrong.

Lovino frowned, and nudged some mud with his foot, which was almost like kicking except without all the effort and mess and didn’t ruin all the work he had done for that damn daisy.

He still didn’t have a plan.

He’d been thinking hard ( _mostly_ ) all afternoon, going over the ways he could get Antonio to notice him. Lovino hadn’t gotten very far, because every time his thoughts danced close to the subject they melted away into visions of Antonio tying his shoes in the rain. Lovino wished he hadn’t sworn to himself that his plan wouldn’t involve water. He wished he had a plan.

Earlier in the afternoon, when he’d been more determined, he’d started laying the groundwork by compiling what he knew about his neighbor in his head: Lovino finally knew Antonio’s name now. He knew where Antonio lived. He knew Antonio’s jogging pattern. He knew Antonio spoke with an accent, and was apparently polite enough to listen to Doris Bramley talk for extended periods of time without running away ( _he could guess that Antonio wasn’t very smart_ ). Lovino was pretty sure, after many careful observations, that he knew what size shorts Antonio wore ( _they were too small for him by two sizes, Lovino could tell. He wished he knew why. He contented himself with staring_ ).

Every so often, during his planning, Lovino took time off to savor his memories of those shorts. Just in case they could give him extra ideas. It was a brainstorming exercise.

But when it came down to it, Lovino couldn’t deny that he barely knew anything about Antonio Fernandez. He didn’t know what Antonio liked to talk about, or what he did for a living or what he ate for breakfast. Lovino didn’t know whether Antonio was _really_ single. Neighborhood gossip was notoriously unreliable. Lovino had only learned that after being informed at a garden party that ‘that man who moved into the blue house on the corner’ was a social delinquent who had nineteen children in four countries. A different, slightly terrified neighbor who Lovino had met minutes earlier had interrupted at that point, introducing Lovino as quickly as he could.

In retrospect, it was kind of funny.

At the time, Lovino had wanted to stab everyone within arm’s reach with celery from the vegetable trays.

Lovino wondered whether Antonio liked celery. He wondered whether Antonio liked gardening. He wondered what Antonio’s face looked like when pressed against warm white sheets.

He hoped his plan ended with warm white sheets.

Lovino took off his work gloves and wiped his forehead. The sun wasn’t as high as it had been, but he’d been ( _sitting around_ ) working diligently for hours, and he was tired. He needed to get cleaned up before 8:30, because even though he wasn’t exactly completely totally ready to suavely sweep Antonio off his feet, Lovino could still watch Antonio run. It was like an appointment. Or a date. Almost like a date, and Lovino was mostly punctual for those. Antonio was making Lovino even more than ‘mostly punctual’ on a daily basis and when everything was sorted out and he was moaning in Lovino’s arms, Antonio had damn well better be fucking appreciative. Lovino did not do schedules so much as he ignored them. The only reason he was still employed was that his boss ignored them even more than he did.

Lovino wondered whether Antonio would be prompt all the time when they were dating. Or fucking. Or… or whatever they did when they were a ‘they’ and not just Lovino pinin—not pining— _watching_ from his window.

What if Antonio was one of those ‘on time is late’ people? What if he was a tightass stickler for rules, what if he expected _Lovino_ to be a tightass stickler for rules?

What if Antonio had _flaws_?

Fearing where his thoughts would lead him next, Lovino stood up in a rush of anger. And quickly fell over again. He scrambled to look at his watch, only to remember that it was broken when it faithfully reported the time to be two o’clock. It was past two. But it wasn’t 8:30 yet, hell, the sun was still out but Lovino had seen him. **Him**. Antonio.

When Lovino had stood, stretching his arms a little, maybe allowing himself a yawn, he had been caught off guard by the sight of Antonio and Antonio’s shorts prancing up the street. Not prancing. Running. Antonio and his little white shorts were running up the street, carefree, in the middle of the day. If Lovino hadn’t been too busy staring from the mud of his garden, he would have noticed that his neighbors were staring too.

How rude could they get?

Antonio didn’t seem to notice. His face was screwed up in concentration. Lovino realized he was close enough to see Antonio’s face properly for once. The extra detail did not disappoint him. That Antonio wasn’t sweaty or even reasonably hard of breathing disappointed Lovino a little, but not enough to ruin the sight. Maybe Antonio had started his jog in a different place, along with at a different time. A different time. Why was Antonio changing his routine _now_?

At 8:30, when no one ran by his house scantily clad or otherwise, Lovino realized that Antonio was going to make planning things really difficult if he didn’t stick his perfect ass to his perfect schedules so Lovino would always know when to find him. Lovino also realized that he’d missed a clear opportunity to actually talk to Antonio earlier in the afternoon when he’d run by four times instead of just two. In Lovino’s defense, he had been frozen in shock. His flight instinct hadn’t kicked in until long after Antonio had stopped coming around the block.

Maybe Lovino could put something on the sidewalk to make Antonio trip. Then he’d still be there when Lovino was ready to impress him. It wasn’t a _bad_ idea, per se… fuck it was the only idea Lovino had at all. He couldn’t be choosy. The begging would come later. He wondered what Antonio looked like when he begged.

The sound of Lovino’s third phone in as many months flooded through the house, washing away Lovino’s newest set of fantasies. Not fantasies. Descriptive mental singular discourses on select topics uh… not fantasies. Lovino was above fantasies about his neighbor.

_RING_

The phone didn’t care about Lovino’s internal battles to phrase his thoughts in ways that sounded less far gone. Neither did the man on the other end, once Lovino finally got around to answering. “Lovi?”

Lovino didn’t know how he did it, but Feliciano was the only person he knew who was able to give unwelcome hugs via phone. Lovino flinched at the intended contact. “What?”

“How are you doing?”

D-did Feli really ask what Lovino thought he had? Feli rarely ever wanted to know about Lovino’s thoughts or feelings; he mostly stayed within the realm of ‘you break things so often, ve, it’s not healthy for you to be so angry all the time I signed you up for these classes, ve…’ when he called. Was this a change? Not that Lovino cared whether or not Feliciano wanted to listen to him, but if Feliciano had asked… “I’m—”

He was interrupted. “That’s great! Listen, ve, do you think you could watch the girls for me this week?”

Even though he was tempted to smash his phone against the wall, Lovino didn’t. Because he was better than that. And because he’d had his newest phone for less than a week and he had his pride. But something else bothered him about Feliciano’s question. “It’s Sunday night.”

“Exactly! Is it alright if we drop them off in…” Feliciano’s voice faded away before returning with the crinkling sound of a plane ticket being unfolded and examined. “Fifteen minutes?”

Fifteen minutes? “H-hey! What makes you think you can just—”

“Thank you thank you thank you Lovi, ve, I promise they’ll behave like angels, they always do.” Fifteen minutes?! “In _fact_ ,” Feli’s voice took the turn it always made when he thought he was being sly. Normally Lovino noticed things like that, but normally Lovino wasn’t having his nieces dumped on him for over a week with only a fifteen minute notice. Feliciano’s wife, who Lovino was only slightly afraid of, usually made Feli tell Lovino at least a _day_ before they rushed off to wherever-the-hell to ‘fix the dishwasher’ like rabbits. “Ve! Since they’ll have to be separated from their puppy until next Tuesday, you should take them to the park to make up for it!”

Feliciano was damn right Lovino wasn’t hosting the dog too. Well-trained mutt or not, Lovino's house was no fucking _hotel_. Wait a second. “ _Next_ Tuesday?”

Feliciano’s voice sped up. “Yeah! But you should definitely go to the park tomorrow. The one near your house with the little duck pond. Around…” Another set of papers crinkled too close to the receiver. “Around one. You should definitely go around then, ve, and make sure to look nice but not too nice because you don’t want any of your clothes to get ruined by all the fur, take it from me, ve, I learned that the hard way. And you should make sure to bring your cellphone with you because I know you don’t remember the number off the top of your head, ve, you should do that because it’s really hard to make plans without knowing how to contact someone. So you’ll do it?”

“Sure.” Lovino’s head caught up with him. “Wait, fuck, next Tuesday? One? Duck ponds? Feli I have work all this week, and Laura has _school_ , and—”

Apparently, Feliciano thought that if he didn’t let his brother finish any of his sentences, Lovino would back down and do whatever Feliciano wanted. He probably thought that because it was often true. “I promise you’ll thank me! And thanks for saying yes Lovi bye we should probably get going now we’ll be at your house in a few but don’t tell anyone I didn’t ask you last month like I promised I would!”

_CLICK_

Carefully, ever so carefully, Lovino turned the handset off, pulled his arm back as far as he could and threw his new phone at his couch as hard as he could. Nothing broke, but it was satisfying all the same. Fucking irresponsible younger brother… the next time Feliciano was around without his wife and kids there to protect him, he was a dead man. Lovino would tell them that Papa was fixing appliances In The Sky, alone. Rosa and Laura would believe him for a few more years, at least.

It wasn’t until he finished making up the spare bed for his nieces, when he was racing down the stairs because “Damn it Feli, you only have to ring the stupid doorbell once. **Once** ,” that Lovino remembered his plans. And how he had yet to make any good ones. It was hard to chase after a guy when you had two little girls hanging off your arms, begging for pasta… his plans to make plans would have to be delayed for another week.

Feliciano’s terrifying wife was still in the car when Lovino opened his front door. It was probably because she knew she terrified Lovino, but as long as nobody said anything about it, it was all the same to him.

Rosa was almost asleep in her father’s arms. “Papa, when will the dishwasher be fixed again?”

“Papa and Mama are getting back in a week... uh, Papa and Mama won't be done for a week, so not till Tuesday afternoon sweetie! That’s when Uncle Lovi will bring you back home.” Lovino resisted the urge to punch his brother in the face in front of his family as Rosa was lifted into his arms. Laura moved her grip from her father’s pant leg to her uncle’s on her own. The transfer complete, Feliciano sprinted back to his car before Lovino could change his mind. He was good at it. “Bye Lovi see you in a week don’t forget to go to the park tomorrow! Wear red!”

The car drove away and Lovino resolved to wear green just to spite him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t mind me, just setting up a few things here and there. You'll see what soon... I am so excited for the end scene. **So excited**.
> 
> That damn daisy: I don’t get fem!NItaly = Daisy, but will reference it anyway.


	4. Plan Ice Cream

The conference began twenty-two seconds after the light under Uncle Lovi’s door went out. It would have started earlier, except Rosa’s legs were short and she’d tried extra hard not to step on any of the creaky floorboards in the hallway. That was the way Laura had been discovered the time before. This time the two tasks of finding the spare flashlights Uncle Lovi kept in the hall closet and waiting to see when Uncle Lovi finally went to bed were assigned to Rosa. Laura called the conference to order the moment Rosa scooted back under the covers of Uncle Lovi’s spare bed. “You took too long.”

“Nuh _uh_! Uncle _Lovi_ took too long turning off his light, and before that the flashlights were too high up, they were on the second shelf this time and they didn’t have any batteries in them at all so I had to go find some but luckily Uncle Lovi keeps them on the first shelf so I found them.” Rosa Vargas was an accomplished speaker for the grand age of four. People said she took after her father, whatever that meant. “And then I came back here and you said we should start, so let’s start!”

Laura waited. Eventually Rosa handed her one of the flashlights ( _the blue one_ ), and the conference continued. “Papa said Uncle Lovi was lonely.”

Rosa nodded and furiously began to doodle on the blanket in front of her with her left pointer finger. She didn’t know how to write, not yet, but as Secretary she had the vague notion that her job required lots and lots of nodding and scribbling. Laura waited quietly for Rosa to finish. People said Laura barely took after her father at all, especially in her patience. Laura knew exactly what that meant, because six was _years_ older than four, and she was already in the first grade. And first graders knew a lot.

And since she was six whole years old, she could see what other people couldn’t. “But Uncle Lovi doesn’t _look_ lonely.” And that was that.

But not for Rosa. “But _Mama_ said so too and Mama’s always right, even when Papa pretends she isn’t, Mama said so!” It was a convincing argument: Mama said important things, often. It was from her that Rosa and Laura had learned words like ‘conference’ and ‘secretary’ and ‘investment portfolio.’

“I guess…”

“And Mr. Antonio’s really nice.” Rosa stopped scribbling. “He taught us how to make Woof sit just by saying it and then just by this,” she waved her hands in a complicated motion that was most likely nothing at all like the hand gesture Mr. Antonio had taught her for getting Woof to sit on command. “And Woof does it, even when he didn’t for Papa or Mama and Mr. Antonio also smiles a lot and he’s nice and I like him and I bet Uncle Lovi would think so too and he’s nice.”

Laura looked down at Rosa’s flashlight, which had fallen sometime in the middle of her display. “I guess.”

“And Uncle Lovi deserves somebody nice and Papa even said ‘Lovi would like him’ and _Mama_ even said ‘ _He_ would like Lovino. That’s the harder test to pass’ and that means that they both like each other so we should make sure Uncle Lovi goes to the park tomorrow when Mr. Antonio is there because otherwise he’ll miss something he likes and that would be bad, because when I miss the ice cream truck I get really sad because I like ice cream and Papa likes ice cream too and so he waits with me while you’re at school because sometimes the truck comes around early. But we miss it sometimes, and I don’t want Uncle Lovi to have to miss his Mr. Antonio ice cream!” Neighbors suggested Mr. and Mrs. Vargas should encourage Rosa to take up swimming; it seemed the best application of her ability to go long periods of time without pausing for breath.

Appalled, Laura handed her sister back her flashlight. “Miss his ice cream…?” What an _awful_ life.

Rosa nodded. And scribbled.

Laura made up her mind. “…My motioning is for Uncle Lovi and Mr. Antonio to be each other’s ice cream trucks at the park.” Rosa stopped her head mid-nod. “Tomorrow.” Rosa stopped her pointer finger mid-scribble. “And not the kind that goes away before you can get anything.”

The sisters shared a grin. Despite what anyone said, both had inherited at least one of their father’s traits: the ability to wait for what he wanted and _snatch_ it when the time was right.

( _Two rooms over, Lovino Vargas’s unassuming dreams were peaceful_ )

\- - - - -

He ended up wearing a red shirt. Not because Feliciano had told him to, but because it was clean, and the green one was too dressy for a walk in the park. “Rosa?” Lovino picked a stray thread off his nice ( _but not too nice_ ) red shirt, and looked from side to side. Rosa tended to wander off when she wasn’t held onto. And of course Lovino had to go and forget to hold on to her… she’d probably be by the duck pond. “Laura?”

The girl clutching his left leg looked up at him, thumb in mouth. Lovino had taken both her and her sister to the playground portion of the park as soon as they had arrived; if Feliciano thought the park would be such a treat for the kids, the playground was the only place Lovino could think of that they would want to be. What else did kids do at parks?

“I’m going to find Rosa over there,” he pointed toward the sound of unhappy ducks being chased. Yes, Rosa was definitely by the pond. “You want to stay here for one minute?”

Laura pulled her thumb out of her mouth slowly. “Alone?”

If she cried… no. Lovino was used to this; of _course_ Laura wanted to be in his presence at all times! The girls always did, whether that involved sneaking into his bedroom to make sure he was awake in the morning or sitting outside ( _after he’d learned to lock_ ) his bathroom door when he showered because they were lonely without him. He stood a little straighter and began to undo Laura’s fingers from the fabric of his jeans. “Of course you can come with me; I wouldn’t make you stay by yourself if you didn’t want to.” Why would she want to when she could stay with _him_?

“I want to stay by myself.”

Huh.

Laura plopped herself down in the middle of the nearby sandbox, and pulled her knees to her chest. “You can go, Uncle Lovi. I don’t mind.”

Well _fine_ then. Lovino shrugged his shoulders at her to give off the impression that he didn’t care that she apparently no longer wanted to cling to his leg like a limpet and follow him everywhere ( _they grew up so fast…_ ). He needed to find Rosa before she gave all the ducks in the park heart attacks. Because if even one of them died, Lovino was pretty sure the neighborhood association knew who to blame. And if there was a Vargas family motto ( _and if Lovino still cared about it, which he didn’t_ ), it had to be ‘It wasn’t me!’

Or ‘everything for the family,’ but since Lovino didn’t care, he didn’t keep track of things like that.

As soon as Uncle Lovi was out of sight, Laura reached into her pocket and pulled out the slim new cellphone she had gotten for her birthday ( _Mama believed direct communication was important. Papa liked giving his daughters shiny presents_ ). She quickly pressed and held the number two… and across the park, Rosa knew it was time to move. She opened her matching phone when it buzzed. “Plan Ice Cream?”

They hadn’t had time the night before to think up cool code names, because Laura had gotten too tired, but they at least had a plan name and that was something. “Go.”

Rosa ran from the bushes surrounding the pond to the trees surrounding the jogging paths, ducking and weaving like she had seen fuzzy animals do on her favorite nature show. Uncle Lovi didn’t stand a chance against their plan! Maybe she and Laura didn’t know _exactly_ where Mr. Antonio went in the park when he took Woof and all the other dogs on walks, but the park wasn’t that big. Especially not when Laura took one half and she took the other, and when Uncle Lovi looked for them he would find Mr. Antonio too and then they would like each other because they were both nice! And they would thank Laura and Rosa, but mostly Rosa, because Rosa was infinity percent sure _she_ was going to be the one to find Mr. Antonio first.

When all he found at the pond were several shaking ducks, Lovino went back to the playground to see if Rosa had somehow beaten him back. Rosa liked the swings. She’d probably be sitting there, waiting for her Uncle Lovi to push her.

She wasn’t. And, to Lovino’s extreme displeasure, Laura was nowhere in sight.

 _Shit_.

He’d become the neglectful parent and/or guardian As Seen On TV: the ignorant jerk who didn’t keep track of his children and/or wards, who then got trapped in open wells or kidnapped by sick child-loving freaks or bullied by the bigger kids who tied them to trees and left them there even when it got dark and called them names and made fun of how they weren’t physically strong ( _If Lovino ever met one of his childhood tormentors again, he’d punch the bastard in the balls. Before running away as fast as he could_). Lovino began to panic. Luckily, he’d grown used to panicking over the course of his life. And decades of experience told his mind to shout before anything else ( _for example, before breaking down in tears_ ). “ROSA! LAURA! GIRLS!”

He waited. Nothing. Or, not the sounds he wanted to hear. Lovino heard plenty of things in the aftermath of his screams: he heard the ducks squawking, he heard someone yelling back at him to shut up. He heard the light trail of the ice cream truck jingle fading in the air. He heard dogs barking, and a far-away voice trying to quiet them. None of those voices belonged to his nieces, and that worried him. If this had been a game ( _and it wouldn’t be the first ‘worry Uncle Lovi to an early grave’ game they’d played_ ), he should have heard familiar giggling coming from the bushes to his left. Or from behind the slide. Lovino should have felt a light tug on his jeans from Laura’s hand, telling him he’d been fooled. But Lovino was alone in the playground, with neither sight nor sound of his brother’s daughters.

Just as he decided more panicking, maybe with a side of running around and turning over every stone, was in order, a stranger appeared. “Something wrong, sir?” He asked as though he didn’t care about the answer and was personally insulted that he had to address Lovino with any respect at all.

Lovino realized that a lone adult standing and screaming in the center of an empty playground was slightly suspicious. Immediately afterwards, he realized what he didn’t quite like about the stranger: the man was a cop. Despite his healthy distrust of the law, Lovino swallowed his pride ( _and panic_ ), and gathered his thoughts together. If anyone was going to help him find Rosa and Laura it was a cop. And if the girls really _were_ tied to trees in the woods and left there, the cop could catch the little bastards who’d done it and when he took down their names for police record, _Lovino_ would learn their fucking little names and that was the most important thing.

“Sir?”

Those little bastards would get what was coming to them. “My nieces are missing. I walked away to look for Rosa at the pond but she wasn’t there, but then Laura wasn’t here and I swear I didn’t have my eyes off her for more than two minutes but—”

Lovino paused to breathe and the officer sighed thankfully. “Right. Well. Mr…?”

“They’re missing, why are we just standing here when they could be tied to trees already?!”

The officer raised one extremely thick eyebrow that hurt Lovino to look at. “Trees…? I mean your _name_. Sir.”

Oh. “Vargas. The girls are Rosa and L—”

“Laura, yes I gathered.” The officer, A. Kirkland if his badge was anything to go by, reached for the gun at his waist. Lovino’s heart stopped before A. Kirkland pulled the radio out of its place next to his gun and began to speak into it. “Kirkland here.” He listened to the returning static and Lovino wondered if the ducks could be responsible for Rosa and Laura’s disappearance. For Rosa’s, at least: they certainly had a motive.

“Yes, I’m still here. It seems two little girls are missing… yes, yes, I know. I’ll see to it, it probably won’t take much longer than half an hour… Yes… Right then. See you back at the station. … what? …no, hey! Touch my curry and you’re a dead man, Jones! Did you hear—?” The static cut off as the man on the other line, Jones, disconnected. Kirkland swore. Lovino kept staring at the ducks. For all that police officers made him uneasy, seeing the unhappiness of others was a little like coming home.

“You’re going to help me find them?” And punish their captors?

“They’ve probably just wandered off, Mr. Vargas. I see it happen all the time.” Bastard thought Lovino hadn’t thought of that already? Rosa and Laura weren’t like that; they wouldn’t run off without a reason. And if they weren’t playing a game, what reason could they possibly have?

Rosa and Laura’s reason sat alone on a bench on the other side of the park, watching the dogs run and chase and have fun. It was really convenient, he reflected, how the park had a special area devoted to letting dogs run around off-leash. It really made his job easier, because otherwise not all of the dogs he walked got enough exercise. Woof, for example, hated jogging on leash, but would run for hours and hours if the other dogs were chasing him.

Antonio Fernandez really liked his job. Loved it even, because it let him do all the things he liked to do, at the schedule he cared to do them: take care of animals, go to the park, run, and take naps in the midday sun. If asked whether or not he was completely content with his life, Antonio would answer that the only thing missing was—

The sharp yank of a tiny fist grabbing the material of his jogging pants cut Antonio’s train of thought in two. “Mr. Antonio?”

If Antonio was right, he knew the name of the little girl who’d pulled herself up onto the bench next to him. “That’s me! And aren’t you one of Mr. Vargas’s little girls? Laura?” She nodded. Antonio smiled and ruffled her hair. “Where are your parents Laura?”

Laura stared at him, unblinking. “Fixing the dishwasher.”

Antonio wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Vargas were letting their daughter run around the park while they fixed an appliance at home. He wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Vargas knew their daughter was running around in the park while they were fixing and appliance at home. He remembered that Mr. Vargas had told him that Woof wouldn’t need any walks for a week, because he and Mrs. Vargas were going on a trip and Woof would be at a kennel. At that thought, Antonio realized that it was even worse for Laura to be running around the park if her parents weren’t even in the same city. “Can you tell me who’s supposed to be watching you? Is your sister nearby? I can take you back to your house, if that’s where you’re supposed to be; only you’ll have to wait for me to get the dogs back on their leashes, because they have to have them outside of this area, even though I don’t really think it’s necessary because they’re all very good dogs!”

Laura continued to stare. She blinked, but that was because she’d gotten dust in her eye. “Papa left us with Uncle Lovi.”

“Uncle Lovi.”

Laura stuck her thumb into her mouth and nodded enthusiastically.

Antonio had a very good guess as to who ‘Uncle Lovi’ was. Because as Antonio was very well aware, the Mr. Vargas who employed him to walk Woof every Monday, Wednesday and Friday had a brother: Mr. Lovino Vargas. Mr. Lovino Vargas, who lived in a light blue house with a white picket fence. Lovino Vargas, who had a beautiful garden instead of a yard and who scowled when he drove. Lovino, who Antonio really wished would come out of his house one evening, hop over his fence and flag Antonio down. Because as much as Antonio loved to run, he did it all day. He didn’t really need to be running all evening too. He could stop once in a while. And chat. And come inside and have bread with peach jam in the morning. And maybe those weren’t the best thoughts to have next to a six-year-old girl. “Is your Uncle Lovi at the park too?”

“Do you like ice cream?”

It was the most serious question Antonio had ever been asked, even if he could only understand part of it, because Laura still hadn’t taken her finger out of her mouth. Something about ice? “Yes?”

Laura’s eyes lit up. In her mind, Mr. Antonio had passed the test. “Uncle Lovi’s here. You should meet him. Rosa says it’s because you’re both nice. And you like ice cream.”

Antonio drew in a deep breath. “Do you want to… show me where your Uncle Lovi is? It’s probably best if I bring you back to him.” And then stick around and ask him out to dinner.

Laura thought about it, and would have answered that she couldn’t remember, because she honestly _couldn’t_ remember where she’d left Uncle Lovi at when she’d run away to start Plan Ice Cream. Was it by the entrance to the park, or by the bathrooms or by the ducks or by the playground or by the tree or by the other tree? She would have answered, but didn’t, because at that moment a man in a red shirt ( _nice but not too nice_ ) ran past the bench she and Mr. Antonio were sitting on.

He was screaming “Laura! Rosa! Where are you?!” because he was Uncle Lovi and he looked really worried, and she didn’t know he knew how to run that fast but she wasn’t surprised. Uncle Lovi could do a lot. A whole lot, which apparently didn’t include noticing that she was sitting on a bench five feet away from the path ( _Papa did things like that too, all the time_ ). It probably didn’t help that the bench faced away from where he’d run, and that she wasn’t tall enough to be seen over the side, but Laura wished Uncle Lovi had run by a little slower: she had Mr. Antonio here already and he and Uncle Lovi still needed to meet. She pointed at Uncle Lovi’s retreating back.

Antonio didn’t notice, not even when Laura smacked him on the leg. He was too busy watching Lovino Vargas run past, shouting and scared and _red suited him_. Antonio wondered if irony always felt so bittersweet. He wondered, as Lovino faded from sight, why in the world he hadn’t stood up and chased after him. Wait. “Hey Laura, hold on! The dogs are going to take care of themselves for a little while!”

\- - - - -

“You’re not going to tell Mama and Papa are you Uncle Lovi, are you? Because we were just playing a game, sort of, we wanted you to find your ice cream truck and he was _there_ , Laura says so but you wouldn’t listen and we were just trying to help and and and Papa says you’re lonely and Mama says he’s passed the hard part already!”

Lovino didn’t look at the girls sitting, heads bowed in shame, at the far end of his kitchen table. He’d gotten Rosa back after Officer Kirkland had fished her out of the bushes near the water fountains. He’d gotten Laura back after Officer Kirkland had looped around to search the north side of the park while Lovino waited with Rosa ( _Kirkland had looked distinctly disgruntled upon his return, which had salvaged a small part of Lovino’s afternoon_ ). Lovino had had to apologize for the trouble and thank Kirkland then, two things ( _along with the hour of fear and panic_ ) that made for the worst afternoon Lovino had had in years. “If you pull a stunt like that again,” he tried to draw upon every drop of authority in his body, “I’m going to…”

Rosa sniffled.

“Going to…”

A tear rolled down Laura’s cheek.

“…fuck it I’m calling your parents.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **SO EXCITED FOR NEXT PART** Ahem. And yet sad ‘cause it’ll be over. Not super sad, since this ran ( _ha_ ) fairly quickly. But sad.
> 
> Papa likes ice cream too: the reason an ‘ice cream’ truck comes around so early? It’s a _gelato_ truck. ¼ of its revenue comes from the Vargas household ( _what addiction, Feliciano has no addictions, what are you talking about_ ). It makes sure to drive by their house as often as it can.
> 
> bathroom door: no respect for the privacy of people showering can be a hereditary trait too.
> 
> trees in the woods: complex much, Mr. Vargas?
> 
> ice cream truck: was probably overdone here, but when little kids get things stuck in their minds, it can be hard to unstick them. Things that involve metaphoric desserts? Psshh, you’d have an easier chance unsticking a penny superglued to the sidewalk. With your bare hands.


	5. Meeting

Lovino Vargas lived in a light blue house with a white picket fence, in a nice neighborhood with a playground down the street. His life was the perfect side of average, the sort of bliss only seen in movies and comics from an earlier age: light blue paint, green garden, white picket fence and no children inside. No children because Feliciano, forehead bunched in worried waves, hands pulling at the edges of the braided keychain Laura had made for him the summer before, had come to pick Rosa and Laura up fifteen minutes earlier.

He hadn’t said much, which had plunged an extra knife in Lovino’s heart. Lovino had already felt the hot stab of almost losing—of almost—of almost _misplacing_ the girls at the park and on the ride home. All three of them had spent the next day under house arrest: Lovino and Laura out ‘sick’ and Rosa banished from the garden. Lovino hadn’t let the girls out of his sight, because he didn’t trust them not to run away again and because they wouldn’t stop babbling about trucks.

Sometimes trucks took children away.

Sometimes they didn’t have to because fucking stupid uncles let children wander off.

Sometimes Lovino needed something to drink.

The rest of the week had passed quickly, quietly, and coldly, until Feliciano had returned, and Lovino had wondered if leaving the girls on his doorstep and running upstairs to hide under his bed would save him from any wrath. In the end, only Feliciano came to pick up Laura and Rosa. In the end, Lovino had forgotten to run until it was too late.

Feliciano came back to Lovino’s front door after securing Rosa and Laura in his car. He didn’t knock, just walked right in and sat down on Lovino’s couch. He watched the street, in silence, and Lovino did too even though it was too late for anyone to run by. If Lovino had been in Feliciano’s situation, he would have slugged himself. Feliciano. Feliciano-in-his-place. Lovino would have slugged the bastard in the stomach, and then forgiven him. Neighbors had a hard time understanding that Lovino Vargas tended to forgive others more freely than his brother did. But it was the truth, and Feliciano kept his hands in his lap while he stared at the street, waiting. Lovino sat. And waited too. For a minute. “Just say it.”

“…what Lovi, ve… what should I say?”

Lovino watched as Feliciano sighed and pulled his arms above his head, the picture of relaxation. He would have preferred the hit. “I almost lost the girls.” He’d said it, it was true, it was true, he was sorry, why wasn’t Feliciano doing anything?

“You did.” Feliciano stared at the ceiling. “And I know you’re sorry.”

“And?”

Feliciano let his arms fall. On the way down, one lightly brushed past Lovino’s face. It was a cheap imitation of the hit Lovino had wished for. “Ve… it’s not really your fault Lovi,” but did he actually _mean_ that, “and the girls will apologize so everything will be fine again, there was no damage done, not even good done and I guess I’m sorry too, ve.”

Lovino blinked. Absolution wasn’t something he was used to, especially not absolution that rambled on and twisted and turned and didn’t end up on the path it had begun. What in the world did Feli have to be sorry about? And why wasn’t he holding a grudge? “Feli?”

“Ve… I’m supposed to tell you this was partially my fault too.” Feliciano winced and after a moment Lovino winced with him. The reason they were both still alive was the twelve-hour plane ride between the neighborhood and where Feliciano’s wife was currently attending a conference. “Because…” He blushed and Lovino felt a wave of annoyance wash over his body. Forgetting that he had no right to make any demands of Feli ( _something his subconscious was all too willing to ignore_ ), Lovino rolled his eyes and shoved his little brother to the other side of the sofa.

“Spit it out!”

Feliciano caved. “I’m sorry I’m sorry the girls are just outside, put your hands down, it’s just that we were talking before we dropped them off at your place last week!”

Feliciano paused, inching the slightest bit farther away. Lovino inched with him. “Yeah?”

“…and they must have overheard us because they ran away at the park and you said they were found by the off-leash area, and I’m already in too much trouble because of work and not getting the laundry done when I said I would and not doing what I said I would when I said I’d do it.” Feliciano rubbed his eyes with his hands. He might have started crying, but Lovino was used to Feliciano getting emotional. “And to top it all off all I wanted was to set you up with Antonio because we were talking one day when he came back with Woof and somehow my family came up and I said you lived nearby and he asked where and I told him and he said that that was nice but the _way_ he said it was more ‘I’m really interested!’ than ‘nice’ so I told him when you got home from work and that you’d probably like his ass because he has a nice one and his personality because he has a nice one of those too and he thanked me but apparently that was bad because somehow the girls heard what I said and repeated it on the phone to their mother on Friday and now I don’t know what to do because she’s so angry with me!”

Lovino was also used to Feliciano setting him up. When they had been teenagers, the affairs had been awkward double-dates with girls Feli probably would have rather had both to himself and who Lovino couldn’t have cared less about. The more recent dates were annoying meetings with men Lovino didn’t know, but whom he had the suspicion were either business partners of Feliciano’s wife or people Feli owed money.

Lovino was _not_ used to Feliciano setting him up on dates he _really_ wanted to go on. Antonio had seemed interested? “…y-yeah?” Feli was trying to set him up again. With Antonio. How did Feli know… and how did he know he would be… and why… And then Lovino’s mind finished processing Feliciano’s confession, at which point he promptly ignored his questions in favor of arguing with his brother. “Serves you right that she’s mad at you; what the fuck gives you the right to talk about me like that?!”

“But,” Feliciano stopped scooting away. “But I just wanted you to be happy.”

Damn it all if Feliciano didn’t always say exactly the right thing… Lovino could feel his eyes beginning to water. “Feli?”

“Because when you’re happy you’re more likely to keep an eye on the girls, and better than this time, and then I can tag along on more overnight conferences!”

…without ever having the right meaning behind it. “Feli.”

Feliciano’s hazy grin wavered. “Ve?”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

\- - - - -

Literally, Lovino’s legs brought him to the community center. He hadn’t felt like driving, that would have taken him there too quickly. And he would have felt like a moron for getting off the bus after only three stops. Walking, slowly, had been his best option. And so he had taken it, the option, and his legs had taken _him_ to the center, to the first of the bi-weekly anger management meetings Feliciano had signed him up for months beforehand he had ever actually attended. It would probably be the only meeting he ever would attend. Because even though Lovino’s legs brought him to the meeting _literally_ , the real reason he went was.

Was.

Not that it was his fault, or that he thought he needed counseling or that he was feeling _guilty_ , but Lovino might have chased his brother out of the house with a kitchen knife the night before, might have felt indebted to Feli for forgiving him so quickly, might have felt the crushing weight of guilt pushing down on his shoulders for over a week. Alright fine, he went to escape the guilt ( _and maybe a tiny bit because he’d been buying too many phones lately, because he’d been smashing too many phones lately. But only a little bit because of that_ ).

The sun had begun to set as Lovino had locked his front door. He had walked with his arms folded close, not minding anything or anyone that happened to get in his way ( _he only walked into two lampposts on the way, and since nobody was around to see it happen, it didn’t really_ ).

He thought about plenty of things as he walked. He thought about his projects at work and his nieces. Lovino thought about what he had had for dinner and how his father had suddenly stopped calling. Every night. At all. He didn’t quite know how to feel about that. Lovino thought about how he wouldn’t be able to watch Antonio for another night in a row, the previous night because he had forgotten ( _as soon as Feliciano had left, Lovino had run upstairs and hidden like he’d meant to an hour earlier_ ) and the current night because the meeting probably wouldn’t be over by 8:30.

Lovino didn’t quite know how to feel about that either, so he pushed it away to the back of his mind.

It began to rain just as he arrived at the community center. At first Lovino smirked at his luck in beating the storm; only a few drops of water had managed to hit his shoulders, the rest of him was dry. Take _that_ … And then Lovino had realized he hadn’t brought a coat or an umbrella or a car. He had effectively trapped himself at the meeting, and as he walked through the front doors and tried ( _but not very hard_ ) to find the right room, he realized the guilt wasn’t weighing on his shoulders quite so heavily anymore. Not nearly as much as it had before. Hell, he felt fine, perfectly fine, he didn’t need some fucking meeting for abusive psychos, he could just slip out and… and… and call Feli, and…

And a door just ahead of Lovino opened, releasing a slow stream of people.

In his rush not to make eye contact with anyone who could stop and drag him into a conversation, Lovino turned to look at the wall next to him. It had a sign on it, which Lovino read idly until he realized he had seen it before. He’d seen it taped all along the walls of the center, since he’d entered the building. ‘THIS WAY TO ANGER MANAGEMENT GROUP MEETING WELCOME!!!! :)’ had been sparkling white glitter on black paper at him for the last five minutes and he hadn’t even noticed. To make it worse, the trail ended at the open door. Lovino froze, before pulling a much-folded scrap of paper out of his pocket. He checked his watch.

He realized his watch was still broken, and checked his cellphone. Yes, this was the time the registration paper Feli had given said the meeting started… so why was everyone leaving? Did the counselor just suck that badly or was Lovino lucky enough to have picked the one night there wasn’t a meeting as his only night to go?

Some of the people leaving the room stared, but no one stopped and before he knew it, Lovino was alone in the hallway again. He could hear the sound of the rain, and the wind, from the main doors opening behind him, letting the other abusive psychos ( _none of whom looked particularly abusive or psychotic to him, maybe the signs were wrong?_ ) out into the night. Once they had all left, Lovino gathered everything he had, very little of which was actually courage, and stepped into the room.

Thankfully, all the glitter had been contained in the signs ( _Lovino had been worried_ ). The room itself was sparse, since most of the people in it had already left. Most, not all. Lovino saw the backs of several others chatting in the far corner of the room, and knew he needed something to distract himself. A table to his left, laden with snacks, seemed the best bet and huh, they weren’t even disgusting snacks, there were home-baked pastries there…

And idiot with a little paper cup was the only other person on Lovino’s side of the room, and unfortunately enough had chosen to stand at the snacks table too. Probably to refill his stupid little paper cup with coffee, which was probably why he was bent over the stupid cheap coffeemaker, which was probably why his tie was dipping into the sugar bowl and his ass was actually pretty attractive, very well shaped and **no**! Lovino wasn’t about to go there. He had _standards_. He had loyalties. He had enough issues for both halves of a relationship; picking a guy up at anger management was a bad idea.

Trying his hardest not to look at the ~~nice ass~~ guy with the coffee who stood between him and free snacks, Lovino edged around to the other side of the table. Did those have chocolate on them…?

“Try the éclairs!” The guy with the coffee straightened, not that Lovino was looking at him, no he was looking at the dessert tray, just the dessert tray, he wouldn’t be feeling so tense if he’d just stayed home, he wouldn’t be feeling so tense if he’d just shown up at Antonio’s house one day with a casserole and said ‘I watch you every night.’ “Francis promised he didn’t even put anything weird in them this time!”

“What?”

Lovino turned.

So did Antonio.

“Hey Toni, help me take down the signs!”

The guy with the coffee, who had actually been Antonio ( _well that made the ass thing make sense… wait… shit…_ ), who was looking at him now with an expression Lovino was almost entirely certain was weird except he’d never seen Antonio from this close before so how the hell would he know what Antonio’s expression was supposed to mean, yelled back. “Do it yourself Gilbert!”

All Lovino could think was that he _hadn’t_ missed the second thing that made his life a little more bearable that day. That, and that he’d never seen Antonio wearing so many clothes before.

“Uh…” oh shit, he was talking, what was Lovino supposed to _say_? “Are you… I haven’t seen you here before.”

Great. Just great. Instead of speaking, because he really didn’t trust himself to come up with anything other than profanities at the moment, Lovino handed Antonio the crumpled registration form Feli had filled out.

“This is… huh. I never saw you on the list.” Antonio folded up Lovino’s form again, and put it into his back pocket. Lovino wondered if he was supposed to ask for it back or just get it himself.

Before that train of thought could travel any farther, the body attached to the voice who had been shouting earlier walked up to Lovino and Antonio’s table. “Hey, you know how fucking _busy_ I am! I don’t have the time to hey, hey! Is that the guy? Y’know, the guy you’re—” Lovino watched, dumbstruck, as Antonio took his little paper cup full of steaming coffee, and threw it at “HEY?! What the fuck was that about, Toni, shit that’s hot that’s hot this is not awesome fuck fuck fuck!”

The people on the other side of the room, a man and three women, moved closer. Antonio sighed. “Sorry Gil.” He picked up a stack of napkins. “My… arm slipped.”

Gil’s eyebrow twitched, but before he could retaliate, the man who had been talking softly with the three women stepped forward and grabbed his hand. “What have we told you about paying attention when you’re holding onto things, Antonio? You and Gilbert,” he took a napkin from Antonio and began to pat down Gil’s front, where a brown stain was slowly cooling and spreading, “need to remember to set a good example for your students, _right_?”

“But Francis—”

For good measure, Francis raised his eyebrows at the three women who were nervously picking up their coats, ready to leave.

Antonio swallowed. “Sorry Gil. I only meant to a little bit.”

Gilbert gritted his teeth. “Yeah, well—” Francis jabbed him in the side, out of view of the women but in full view of Lovino, who was still standing where he’d been originally, and who was more confused than he’d been coming home from the park the week before. What the fuck? “I mean. I accept your apology, Toni. And now we can move past this.”

Francis ( _…wasn’t that the name of the guy Antonio said did_ things _to the snacks?_ ) grinned. “Naturally!” He winked at Antonio, then, which Lovino caught even if Antonio probably didn’t, from the look on his face. “And now that you two have reconciled peacefully, I’ll take Gil to the restroom to clean himself up.” He let go of Gilbert’s hand and moved to envelop Antonio in what was ostensibly a goodbye hug.

Lovino _saw_ Francis’s left hand straying, though, and if he wasn’t so appalled ( _I saw it first!_ ) he would have said something, but before he knew it Francis had groped Antonio’s ass and had come away with Lovino’s registration form. Fucker.

“In fact, why don’t you take Mr.…” Francis frowned and Lovino knew it was because Feliciano had ironically failed every penmanship class he had ever taken, “Mr. V—”

“Vargas.”

Funny. Lovino swore he only had one voice.

Suddenly, Gilbert’s face twisted from the sour expression he had been sporting ever since he hadn’t been allowed to wallop Antonio for fucking spilling coffee on him, to something more reminiscent of the cat allowed in the bird refuge. “So you _are_ him! Hey, Toni, Francis is right. It’s your fault he didn’t know about the time change, so you should take Vargas _home_ ,” he waggled his eyebrows, which was entirely unnecessary because Lovino wasn’t absolutely _stupid_. “We’ll clear up here for you.”

Antonio laughed a little as Francis and Gilbert shuffled the women out of the room and shut the door. Lovino was too busy recoiling from the words Francis had whispered in his ear before leaving. “ _You can thank me for them later._ ” If he had had the chance to start eating before Antonio had made a scene, Lovino would have spat his food right out again.

And then it was him and Antonio. Antonio and him. Lovino knew he needed to say something. But Antonio spoke first. “…I wonder what Gil was talking about,” Lovino resigned himself to being the intelligent one in the relationship, “but that doesn’t really matter. S-so… what brings you here?” He leaned one arm against a folded chair. The chair didn’t move, and Lovino glared at it, because he knew if he had tried the same trick the stupid thing would have flipped over.

“My brother signed me up.”

Antonio blinked. “Feli did?”

It was odd, having a conversation with someone who already knew a freakish amount about you. “Yeah.” The surprise returned a little of Lovino’s normal bluntness. “What are _you_ doing here?”

Antonio smiled and oh God, up close it was _good_. “Gil and I run the group!” He stepped closer and put a hand on Lovino’s shoulder. “You’d never guess,” he looked left and right before continuing, as though he were divulging a secret, “that Gil and I used to have really big anger problems when we were kids.”

Lovino would have contented himself with staring into Antonio’s eyes, except he was busy with staring at Antonio’s hand. It was resting on his shirt, he could feel the warmth, why hadn’t he worn something _nicer_ … “And the other one?”

“Francis?” Lovino nodded without looking up, and Antonio looked down to see what was so interesting. After a few seconds of staring at his own hand, he panicked and pulled it back as though he’d been burned. “Sorry! Ha, Francis just comes to pick up women, we keep telling him to stop it, but he brings the food and he goes away when they tell him to.” Antonio gulped like he had before, loudly and was it supposed to be a sign of something? Before Lovino could decide, Antonio looked down at his hand and took a deep breath. When he spoke, Lovino had to sit down. “You know, Francis was also the one who loaned me those shorts? Because your brother, Feli, said you might be interested and something else I don’t remember and I think I overheard something else about you at a party once, something weird like you have seven kids or something, but Feli said you were single and I trust him since he’s your brother. _My_ brother once tried to mail me to Portugal when we were younger, but even he wouldn’t lie about something like this if you asked him if I wanted to get to know you better.”

Lovino hoped, against hope, against the table leg because he might have missed the edge of the table itself when he had tried to lean against it and was now sitting on the floor, that Antonio didn’t always talk like this. Feliciano was enough. Feliciano and Rosa were enough. Feli and Rosa and Laura and… fuck it all, he’d invested too many 8:30s of his life in Antonio to let him off easy now.

“…but then Francis said it was a bad idea to just _ask_ you if you wanted to go out and Gil said it was a better idea to ask if you wanted to have sex in an alleyway because if you said yes that would show you were adventurous and if you said no you were smart because alleyways are actually pretty nasty, and I could choose for myself which answer I was looking forward to more.”

If Antonio Fernandez tried to pull him down an alley to… to… Lovino would be disgusted. A little turned on, of course, but mostly disgusted.

Antonio continued to talk. Lovino remembered to breathe. “But I don’t know, I’ve seen the alleys around here and I don’t think they’d be very comfortable, and I really thought it would be better to bring something over to your house, because I can cook pretty well, my sister taught me, and then maybe we’d… something. I didn’t want to think too far, because I didn’t want to end up disappointed, not that you’re disappointing!” Lovino let his body relax ( _like **fuck** was he disappointing_ ). “But then Francis had the idea that I should run by your house, since Feli told me when you’d definitely be home, in the evenings, and because Francis said I should show off my best. Gil wouldn’t let him finish his sentence then, but that didn’t matter because I realized he was right! I’m really good at running, so when Francis gave me his shorts it didn’t even matter that they were too small and hard to move in. Or that it was cold.”

Lovino waited, but Antonio didn’t say anything else. Instead, he picked a long dark coat off the back of a chair and slung it under one arm. And waited by the door.

“I…” Antonio perked up at the sound of Lovino’s voice, which was a good sign. A very good sign. Lovino had no idea what to do with good signs anymore. Things were easier when he was just watching Antonio run shirtless down the street. “I…” He stood up. “I need a ride back.”

Antonio stared at him.

“ _Home_.”

Antonio’s eyes widened and Lovino prepared himself to get used to explaining everything. Having someone there to listen didn’t feel like such a punishment, though.

“I know where you live.”

Lovino bit his lip. “Yeah well, so do I.” Antonio’s head tilted to the left and Lovino cut him off, “Where _you_ live. And I know where you work, now. And…” he searched his mind for something that didn’t peg him as a creepy stalker, “And I know you… you like dogs.” So maybe that was really repeating what Antonio’s job was. So what?

They stepped into the hallway together. No one else was there.

“Hey, we can trade!” The absurdity of the situation had set Antonio at ease, or so it seemed, because all of a sudden he was walking much closer to Lovino and grinning and laughing. And maybe the situation was affecting Lovino too, because even though he was blushing, he wasn’t ashamed of himself at all. In fact, he felt more relaxed than he had for a full month of 8:30s. “I know where _you_ work too, and even though I don’t know for sure if you like dogs, I know you like gardening because the first time I ever saw you, you were showing your garden off to some people and you looked really happy.”

The front doors were difficult to open, because of the wind, and Lovino didn’t relish having to step out into the pounding rain ( _damn rain_ ). He was glad when Antonio lingered.

“Lovino?”

It felt normal.

Fuck, he was turning into an idiot.

“Yeah?” An idea came to Lovino and he thought he might as well try it, what could he lose? “Antonio?”

Instead of answering immediately, Antonio pushed one of the doors open, pulling Lovino with him, close. He tried to walk away, Lovino had no idea where to. He stopped when Lovino grabbed his collar, pulling him back. “You…” you’re **_real_** , “you want to get some coffee instead?”

What the hell was he doing?

Antonio answered him by starting to run, which he was very good at, but which Lovino wasn’t quite as good at, which resulted in an oddly paced half-gallop through puddles and broken tree branches and piles of wet leaves for the both of them. Antonio didn’t stop until they reached a small black car. Lovino’s breathing was still fast once he settled into the passenger seat. Antonio’s wasn’t. “What did you say back there? I couldn’t hear you.”

Lovino had been half-prepared to apologize to the rain after getting to see Antonio soaked again, but if he had to somehow find the courage to ask Antonio out for the second time in as many minutes, he was damning it to hell. “I said…”

And suddenly Antonio was in his lap, except he wasn’t, because he was just buckling Lovino’s seatbelt and as swiftly as he had leaned over Lovino’s body he leaned back. But not before chuckling into Lovino’s ear “kidding, I heard you,” but Lovino was getting the hang of whatever they were starting, so he felt no remorse in hitting Antonio in the arm for being a dick ( _until after he’d done it. He didn’t apologize, though, on principle_ ). It was something Antonio was just going to have to get used to. And by the way Antonio was smiling as he started the engine, tie askew and wet shirt clinging to his skin, he knew it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Moral of the story: see that opportunity running seductively past your window? Take it. Make sure to cook it breakfast after. Unless it prefers cooking you breakfast. Actually, optimum situation: make breakfast **together**._ …did I really just write that? At any rate, THANK YOU EVERYBODY for reading and commenting and maybe not commenting but enjoying and so on and everything. This was a fun one: it certainly made my last month brighter.
> 
> “I never saw you on the list”: it’s hard to legitimately sign someone up for something when no one can read what you’ve written on the form.


End file.
